6-Jul-2010 Posted by Chris

Nostalgia does not a business model make.

I have been thinking about death a lot lately. Not necessarily the human version, but more in terms of how businesses and whole business models die. In fact, I tend to laugh at the mourners of a business; usually it’s nostaligic customers or naive shareholders. (I admit to be one of those nervous laugher’s who will smile and chuckle my way through a real funeral to cope. This is worrisome, but... read more

29-Jun-2010 Posted by Chris

Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) and Internet Applications / Services

I am NO tax expert, and you should consult your own on this topic. BUT if you haven’t already, you may be in for a surprise on July 1st, 2010. It’s a fairly well known fact, especially to those who live in Ontario and British Columbia, that on July 1st, 2010 the Provincial Sales Tax and GST of each province will be harmonized into the HST. This has been the case for Newfoundland, New Brunswick,... read more

15-Jun-2010 Posted by Chris

Profit 100 CEO Summit

Tomorrow my business partner Don Riep and I take off to Toronto to attend the Profit Magazine’s Profit 100 CEO Summit. It was certainly nice to make their list this year, ranked in the 30th spot. Taking a day to spend with other entreprenuers and an evening celebrating at the dinner and awards banquet, will be a nice treat. But this is not as much an award as it is a recognition of the hard work and... read more

14-Jun-2010 Posted by Chris

The Things the Thing….

I rarely get giddy about software, but Things for Mac is my new favourite tool. Things takes the simple and keeps it simple, yet powerful. Basically it’s a task manager tool that allows you to do just that, manage tasks. My experience with task management applications is that they are either so basic they miss the mark, or far too complicated and make learning them too great a task on their... read more

8-Jun-2010 Posted by Chris

Lets make a deal.

In three short days, a chapter of Yardstick Software will be behind us, as we move into our new office space down the street. The past 4 years of our company progress has been a very significant phase, one which might compare to transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood. We got to grow in an office that was conducive to openess, collaberation, fun and yet serious enough to leave the right... read more

2-Jun-2010 Posted by Chris

Organic growth challenges

Keeping with my topic of yesterday and what will develop into a theme this week, is a topic that I have struggled with for the last year or so. External growth. My background is not running a small company, but actually running divisions/regions of much larger, publicly traded growth companies. In my previous industry (solid waste collection, landfills and environmental services); organic growth and... read more

1-Jun-2010 Posted by Chris

Customers as partners

Our company has seen some tremendous growth over our first five years, with our revenues set to hit $5M this year. Luckily for us, 80% of this revenue is derived from recurring monthly charges, and from over 250 happy customers. Sitting and reflecting tonight how we did that, it came to me pretty quickly that we started in 2005 with our first customer as a partner. Now I am not talking about using empty... read more

28-May-2010 Posted by Chris

New York Times Skimmer

If you come by here often, looking for new content, then indeed I must be dissapointing you. But I wanted to at least share with you a small post on something that I have fallen in love with lately, and found quite by accident. One of the websites I find time for almost every night before heading to bed, is the New York Times website. Browsing though it last week, I found a very small link (it must be... read more